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Wednesday, 14 June 2017

Bitcoin exchanges shut down amid heavy trading

The
Bitcoin market hit record highs over the weekend before dropping
further than it has in years. Several exchanges for the
cryptocurrency suffered outages during the fluctuation, leaving
customers unable to buy or sell for hours.

Coinbase,
one of the most popular ways to buy and sell popular cryptocurrencies
such as Bitcoin, ethereum and litecoin experienced an outage Monday.
For several hours, buyers and sellers were met with a screen that
read, “service unavailable.”

The
company cited high customer traffic and trading volume for being
“down for maintenance.” Coinbase claimed that the issue was
resolved by 7:44pm EST.

As
the site experienced such high traffic, the entire market for Bitcoin
was in a state of wild fluctuation. On Sunday, Bitcoin climbed to a
record high of $3,041.36, according to CNBC.

Then,
on Monday, Bitcoin experienced its largest crash since January 2015,
falling more than 16 percent to $2,532.87. Those looking to sell
their Bitcoin on Monday as the price plummeted by more than $500 were
unable to do so through Coinbase.

Coinbase
also experienced an outage due to increased traffic on May 25, less
than three weeks ago.